An apology to Ross Adair
Northern Knights batter wasn't even supposed to open in this series but rewarded the faith shown in him with a career-best display
Since journalism exists purely to demand accountability from the powerful and famous, it is only fair that members of the fourth estate admit when they themselves are wrong.
Ross Adair, I was indeed familiar with your game. I just didn’t think it was good enough. Until Sunday night.
The one-cap Ulster rugby wing had the performance of a lifetime in his second professional sport, blasting his way to 100 off 58 balls. Alongside Paul Stirling, Adair underpinned Ireland’s winning total of 195. It was the first time Ireland have beaten South Africa in T20s.
Both publicly and privately, I had expressed the view that Adair’s power game was unlikely to translate to the international stage. He’s smacked around interpro bowlers enough to create intrigue. Yet when facing proper, skilled fast bowling atop the Irish order, he had previously been found out. Go back and watch how Bangladesh’s Hasan Mahmud or Pakistan’s Shaheen Afridi made him look with their array of slower balls, bouncers and yorkers. It wasn’t pretty.
Recently, the view was expressed in these pages that it may well be a case of simply giving Adair time. Because of Ireland’s commitment to the Andrew Balbirnie-Paul Stirling opening partnership, they have never really bestowed upon Adair the run of games required to adapt to international cricket. After all, if Adair’s issue was reacting to top-end skills, he wasn’t going to develop launching Warriors bowlers into the houses at Bready. It would have to be at the top level, with scope to fail.
In many ways, it is a hallmark of Irish cricket how this latest opportunity presented itself. Ireland did decide to move away from Balbirnie and his lower strike-rate prior to this tour. Only it was Lorcan Tucker, not Adair who was to open. Adair was seen a spare opener and a spare finisher - he was more likely to get a game at five to slog a few at the end of an innings.
On the eve of the series, Tucker suffered a blow to the helmet in the nets. He was rule out and it remains to be seen if he will recover in time for the ODIs starting on Wednesday. In stepped Adair. It was a pure accident that he was opening the batting. Tucker’s own T20 renaissance was also down to chance, Gareth Delany’s positive Covid test allowing Ireland’s ‘keeper to bat at 3 against the USA in 2021. He scored 57 and 84 in back-to-back games to kick off a stellar year up the order.
Armed with his own luck, in Friday’s first game Adair struck at an impressive 180 runs per 100 balls faced. The only problem was, while the boundary hitting got Ireland off to a good start, being dismissed for 18 off 10 wasn’t going to cause any selection conundrums.
48 hours later, Stirling and head coach Heinrich Malan now have a problem on their hands - albeit a desirable one. Adair cannot be dropped or moved out of the opening slot after that performance.
Unlike the first T20, Adair started slowly on Sunday. Just seven runs came off his first 11 balls. Lungi Ngidi bowled seven dots to Adair in his first two overs. Ireland’s opener - whose first name according to Cricinfo is actually George, not Ross - made up for it slightly with a pair of boundaries down the ground.
Ngidi bowled four overs at under a run a ball. Before Ireland’s late collapse, every other South African bowler had an economy of over 10. Once Ngidi departed the attack, Adair tucked in. Dancing down the track to both pace and spin was his modus operandi. His short, squat stature allowed his body to power through the ball on contact. The explosive, fast twitch muscle developed while playing rugby no doubt helps. When Adair does connect, he is Ireland’s cleanest ball striker.
Ross’ father, Ricky, works in the defence and aerospace industry. The jokes about his son’s ability to hit bombs write themselves.
The aggression with which Adair plays means luck often has to be on his side in order to succeed. A number of dropped catches and missed runout chances helped his cause. The Cricinfo commentary referenced a cat’s propensity for nine lives and Adair’s possession of even more.
If so minded to look for them, luck was one of two caveats attached to Adair’s innings. The other is the quality of this South African side. Ngidi was the closest to a first choice bowler in their XI. Of the attack which took the Proteas to the T20 World Cup final earlier this year, only Aiden Markram was playing on Sunday. He didn’t bowl.
It still takes an incredible display of hitting to launch missed yorkers, slower balls and tossed up deliveries into the stands. Good bowlers do offer boundary balls. If Adair can survive the more threatening deliveries from better operators, he can make a decent career of punishing half-volleys.
If anything else, Sunday was the type of display which can convince a coach/analyst to take a punt on a cheap replacement batter in the myriad of franchise leagues over the winter. Such talk may be premature, but if Adair has a good agent, this innings could make him a fair bit of cash.
Adair will face significantly higher quality opposition than this. He will again have days where he is found out. But if he can produce half as well as he did on Sunday more often than not, the gamble to move on from Balbirnie may well pay off for Ireland.
T20 series notes
The one negative - if it can be called that - of Adair’s performance is where it leaves Lorcan Tucker in the T20 side. Had Adair hit another pretty 20 off 12 balls, to go with his 18 off 10 on Friday, he would have earned plaudits for his ball striking but nothing more. Tucker undoubtedly would have come back in when Ireland next play a T20, likely in Zimbabwe in January. Now, Adair can’t be dropped. What about Tucker? He can’t fairly be left out given he was never given a go at his new opening role. Does he go back to 3, meaning Harry Tector is shunted out of that gig after just two games? Is Tector’s place at risk seven single figure scores in his last eight T20Is? Does Tucker go back to the middle order in place of Neil Rock? Does Curtis Campher now miss out or is his bowling too important to the balance of the side? We won’t find out until January at the earliest. Such a selection problem is a good one to have, but it is a problem nonetheless.
Kudos to Mark Adair. Obviously for his 4-wicket haul on Sunday, including three in one over which went a long way to shutting the door on South Africa. But also for channelling his inner Stuart Broad. Opinions will differ on his new headband (above) but it is a look. When you combine Mark’s wickets with Ross’ runs, it seems unlikely we’ll see a better day for Adair family in the green of Ireland.
Fair play to Graham Hume. From a pure skillset point of view, he shouldn’t be closing out T20 games for Ireland. This applies to much of Ireland’s attack, but Hume particularly; his lack of pace means his margin for error is so, so small. In that final over, he nailed one yorker and a slower bouncer moments later to seal victory. This after he hadn’t played an international since May. His performance shouldn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. That’s sport.
As is traditionally the case, the victory on the pitch means we have good news aplenty to discuss as opposed to the thorny issues off it. Still, it is worth highlighting again how these ‘home’ games taking place in the UAE, a travesty caused by Ireland’s financial position, deprived both fans and players of a big moment in front of their own people. The stadium in Abu Dhabi was largely empty and soulless. Despite the location, Cricket Ireland staff were required to be flown out for various hosting duties. That there were over half-a-dozen of them pictured both in the stands and what appeared to be hospitality areas raised eyebrows. The original cost of hosting these games in the UAE rose by a substantial six-figure sum a number of months ago. The requirement of having person X and Y out there can be argued, I’m sure - especially when the Irish ambassador to the UAE was a guest at one match. With this context, though, these travel costs are not the greatest look for an organisation which has already struggled with optics this year.
Tangentially related from a cost point of view is the issue of Ireland’s future T20 fixtures. On the current Future Tours Programme, including the two games which just took place, Ireland had 20 games between this series and the next T20 World Cup. However, in a press conference last week, Heinrich Malan said that he was expecting just 12-14 fixtures. Earlier this year, in an interview for this site, when asked to offer re-assurances that more fixture cuts wouldn’t come after the Australia series went by the wayside, Cricket Ireland CEO Warren Deutrom could not do so. In a recent piece with Forbes, high performance director Richard Holdsworth said that Ireland are “going to have to limit the amount we play at home" until “we get more permanent facilities with our national stadium.” Combine the public chatter and it is all but certain that more fixture cuts are coming. (Bear in mind this South Africa series was supposed to be three T20s but only two materialised)
Before the next World Cup, Ireland’s T20 schedule according to the FTP is as follows: Three games in Zimbabwe early next year; six next summer at home to West Indies and Afghanistan; nine away next winter in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Given their shared history of cutting fixtures, those games in Zimbabwe and the home ones next summer seem most at risk. If Malan is correct with his forecast of 12-14 matches, that means, given one South Africa game is already gone, anywhere from five to seven further matches are on the chopping block.
Returning to on-field matter: what to do with Neil Rock? His innings on Friday - 37 off 28 - looks good on paper, but it wasn’t always fluid. All players are confidence players, but Rock looks to be a particularly strong case in point. At one stage, he walked nonchalantly across his stumps and effortlessly flicked a missed yorker over square leg. Yet he also chewed up dot balls and singles to a left-arm spinner early in his innings, a match-up which, as Ireland’s only left-handed batter, calls on him to be the aggressor. Akin to Adair, we’ve seen Rock’s power in the interpros - even if this summer was a quiet season. There looks to be some sort of mental next step missing now he’s back in the international side. There is previous with this mental issue. Throughout his career, Rock has been criticised for a weakness against the short ball. Nearly all batters would say problems with hostile bowling are mental, rather than down to ability. It seems that Rock needs an arm around the shoulder making him feel a million dollars. It’s questionable that such a soft touch is head coach Heinrich Malan’s style. In any case, after being promised a run in the side as part of Ireland’s new-look order, Adair’s form and the need to fit Tucker back in could see Rock once again dropped.
Is this Irish attack turning a corner? It’s hard to tell. In helpful conditions in America, they had some poor moments. Prior to that World Cup, in the home series against Pakistan, they seemed incapable of defending totals, lacking the pace to threaten on a flat Clontarf pitch. They then went to the Netherlands and closed out victories with stellar death bowling. More recently in this series, the attack went around the park in game one, offering next to no threat, before nailing their slower balls and yorkers in a high quality death display in game two. Ireland’s lack of ability to produce high end pace is, again, an issue for another day. But as long as they do struggle in this area, they will have difficult days like Friday. They may well continue to slowly improve so that there are outings like Sunday where secondary skills are executed well enough to win. But as long as there isn’t a group of top-end quicks, Ireland will always risk being hit to all parts on a flat pitch - at least, more so than other teams.
You have previously said that selection for Ireland will always be a bit of a punt, with the gulf between inter pros and internationals.
England picked Vaughan and Trescothick more on their mentality than numbers, so it may work.
With Stirling playing a more controlled game in ODI, I think that there is an argument for Adair to open and make the most of the 10 over powerplay, if it doesn't work Balbarnie and Tector have the records to steady the ship bat deep and at 5 runs an over, and allow Tucker Dockrell and Campher can reprise their T20 roles
The bowling is a worry, how many times were 5 singles minimised by a boundary off the 6th ball
Not convinced Hand is good enough, (certainly no better than the underused Campher) but who else is there if no Young, McCarthy or Little